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Revisiting a Raised-Root Cascade White Pine-

This tree has developed quite a bit in the last few years. The exposed roots have grown in size, and the development of the branches made our re-tweaking a bit more complete.

Konnor is a client who tosses a few trees in a car and drives across several state lines to spend a few days in my studio. I always look forward to his visits.

Enjoy our re-tweaking…!

This was the original front in 2006…

…and here’s the other side, also in 2006, when Konnor was beginning to toy with it as a new front.

This is in January 2015, before we did anything.

After branch-shortening pruning and needle thinning.

Konnor sporting a ‘Telperion Farms’ sweatshirt…

This pine was grown in a tub of pumice surrounding the akadama/pumice rootball for a couple of years, to give the tree a bit of ‘umph’.

With the branches nearly set…only a few at the apex left to go.

This was our original ‘Ok, we’re done!’ and then, on second look, I saw the apex was too open and gangly…

…so I reset the branches up there in the apex. It’s subtle, but look back and forth between these last two photos and you should see a difference. I would have gotten a ‘65%!’ from Suzuki on that first one. Apexes should be dense and with a clean profile. If they lack that, the tree lacks solidity, just as if a key branch had not been attended to. I forgot to measure this tree, but you can see from the photos with the two of us, who are normal sized human beings, that the tree is somewhat smaller than a normal sized tree. Which isn’t much more than vague. In any event, we’ve been waiting to put this fella in a new pot for a long time, so that was productive, too.